We wrote a live blog of the U.S. stock market Friday. You can read a wrap of pre-market actions here and after the open, a compact rundown of the stock market in Market Snapshot. For questions or comments, please email lmandaro@marketwatch.com.

It’s forecast to be sunny and in the 60s on the West Coast where this particular stock blogger is following stocks, but for the Northeasteners reading this from under an afghan — welcome, we’ll try to keep it toasty.

The market is, ahem, heating up a bit after the 2014 opening day dud. Here’s a look at the benchmarks:

There’s not much on the calendar — except a ton of Fed speakers. A bunch are taking the stage at the American Economic Association’s conference in Philadelphia.

Philly Fed President Charles Plosser starts things off at 10:15 a.m. with a talk on transitioning from a low-interest rate environment.

Here’s the line-up of Fedspeak from MarketWatch’s Greg Robb. Not market-moving, but maybe interesting, is outgoing Fed chief Bernanke’s talk at 2:30 where he opines on the past and future. Fed speakers hit the podium on Saturday, too.

In early December, this is what he said about the Fed’s asset purchase program.

“It would be wise if we began to get rid of this program,” Plosser said in an interview on CNBC. “I don’t think it is doing very much good for us. I think it has a lot of potential unintended consequences and risks to the economy down the road.”

Fedspeak aside, most of the market oxygen continues to be sucked up by this question: Is the rally over and should we get out?

In the camp of “stick around, the fun’s not over” is Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management. He’s been a staunch optimistic, even during the bumps in 2011. Here’s what he wrote on Thursday:

While economic players are becoming more comfortable than earlier in this recovery, the full-out ‘animal spirits’ behaviors almost always obvious before recoveries end have yet to surface.

Paulsen actually isn’t expecting big gains this year. More likely, he writes, we’ll end the year flat. But that’s not to say it won’t be a rollercoaster.

Perhaps the S&P 500 will reach as high as 2000 before succumbing to a correction returning it close to where we begin the year. Isn’t it just like the stock market to turn more difficult just as most are finally beginning to return to stocks for the first time in this recovery?

It looks like Americans did not buy as many cars in December from the “Detroit Three” as analysts predicted.

General Motors sales fell last month by 6.3% to 230,157, when forecast were for a 0.8% rise. Ford Motor sales rose 2% to 218,058 vehicles, missing analysts’ expectations of a 5.9% gain.Privately owned Chrysler Group LLC reported a 5.7% increase in sales last month to 161,007 units, also missing analysts’ expectations.

Main indexes are trading in a narrow range amid thin volumes as many traders are still on holiday, while a major storm in the Northeast hampered travel in the tri-state area.

“Trading volume is off at least 25% this morning and will likely be lower all day due to the mammoth snow storm and today being the last day of a holiday week. Next week volumes will rise as market participants will be back to work and investors will be re-allocating portfolios for 2014,” said Channing Smith, managing director at Capital Advisors.

Stock markets are giving up earlier gains after the Philadelphia Fed president Charles Plosser warned of rapid rate rises, while speaking at the American Economic Association meeting. Via Steve Goldstein:

Plosser warned that the central bank may have to be “aggressive” in lifting interest rates and may have to chase market rates higher, if banks were to quickly release reserves. He also suggested the expectations of his colleagues by the end of 2016 that calls for Fed funds rates to be below 2% even when the job market is back to normal may be too low. Plosser also said the central bank could face political pressure not to lift rates. “Technically we can certainly do that, but it will be a question of will,” he said. He also said the Fed is monitoring asset prices and leverage to avoid “frothiness” in markets. Plosser is known for his hawkish views and becomes a voting Federal Open Market Committee member this year. The Fed last month started tapering their bond-purchase program, reducing monthly purchases to $75 billion.

Hacking and other more serious cyber attacks are on the rise, so when one computer-security firm buys another, investors rush in to buy.

FireEye Inc late on Thursday announced that it is buying another cyber-security firm Mandiant Corp, a company known for its report linking cyber attacks on U.S. companies to the Chinese military. The deal is worth $1 billion.

FireEye shares surged 34% by midday.

Writing about the stock, Nomura analysts reaffirmed their buy recommendation:

We view this [Mandiant deal] as highly complementary and a strategic positive in expanding the completeness of the product offering in advanced threat detection. Also, this facilitates both a broader entry into the larger IPS market and the delivery of FireEye’s virtual machine APT products to the endpoint market. These are significant new product directions for the company. FireEye also announced preliminary results for its fourth quarter, which were above expectations.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a full-throated defense in front of the economics profession to his nearly eight-year tenure running the central bank, arguing without near-zero interest rates, new communication methods and unconventional bond purchases the economy may have stagnated or even fell back into recession, writes Steve Goldstein. More details in the full report here.

“Skeptics have pointed out that the pace of recovery has been disappointingly slow, with inflation-adjusted GDP growth averaging only slightly higher than a 2% annual rate over the past few years and inflation below the Committee’s 2% longer-term target,” Bernanke said at the American Economic Association annual meeting in Philadelphia.

“However, as I will discuss, the recovery has faced powerful headwinds, suggesting that economic growth might well have been considerably weaker, or even negative, without substantial monetary policy support. For the most part, research supports the conclusion that the combination of forward guidance and large-scale asset purchases has helped promote the recovery.”

He said financial healing, greater balance in the housing market, less fiscal restraint and continued monetary-policy accommodation bodes well for U.S. growth in coming quarters.

In a fitting reminder of the Fed-day rallies that have characterized Bernanke’s tenure, stocks are perking up as Bernanke speaks. He started speaking at 2:30 to a packed room at the American Economic Association’s conference in Philadelphia.

That’s a a wrap for Friday. We leave you with this bit of number-crunching from Mark Hulbert, who weighs in on whether following 2013′s rock stars (ie Netflix, Best Buy) is likely to make you money this year. Short answer: Nope.

You should instead be focusing on strategies with superior track records over far longer than just the last 12 months. More like 15 years, in fact.

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